弁慶 べんけい Benkei
Suttsu, Shiribeshi region, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Penke-ru, Penike-ru, Perke-i, Pen-ikkew
Cape Benkei is already called 弁慶岬 in mid-Edo records, and the Japanese name carries the Yoshitsune and Benkei legend of Suttsu Bay, where Benkei is said to have waited at the point for a fleet that never came. The Ainu-side spellings on the old maps run ヘニケウ, ベニケウ and ヘニツケウ.
Location
42.8229, 140.1880 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 弁慶岬. Open in OpenStreetMap
Referents
- cape Cape Benkei, the western point of Suttsu, where Route 229 rounds the headland.
Analyses
perke-i
ペㇾケイ ‘torn place’ proposedProponent: 永田方正 (Nagata Hōsei)
Popular accounts give the reading as ペル・ケイ; Nagata's own division falls at perke-i. Split rock is common all over the cape, which gives the reading some ground.
Objections
- The step from ペレケイ to ヘニケウ is doubtful. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
perke is a dictionary word and the split rock is there, but the reading does not reach the ni of the recorded spellings.
pen-ikkew
ペニッケウ ‘the back and neck of an animal’ proposedProponent: 上原熊次郎 (Uehara Kumajirō)
The sound fits the recorded spellings closely.
Objections
- No parallel place name of this shape is known. The pattern looks like a name given first and matched afterwards to a word that happens to sound like it, which is the shape of a place-name tale. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
Both parts are dictionary words and the fit to the spellings is close; nothing supports a body-part name for a cape here, and no parallel is offered.
penke-ru
ペンケル ‘the upper road’ proposedProponent: 間宮林蔵 (Mamiya Rinzō)
Mamiya records the cape as ヘンケル and reads it as the upper road. The author takes this reading and identifies the road: the shore route breaks off at a deep cleft in the rock past the Mado rock of Fueomai, and the traveller climbs to the plateau and continues above. Matsuura does exactly that in the Kaiho nikki, 伊能大図 marks ru-san 'the road comes down' on the far side, and the 西蝦夷地行程 of the Bunka era records a mountain road from Matsunatomari to Sametomari. The road that Route 229 now follows is that penke-ru.
Variants
- penike-ru ‘the upper road’ — The author states that penke and penike are both in the dictionaries and mean the same thing.
Evidence
- parallel place names
The same name appears on the coast at Yoichi, where 伊能大図 writes ヘンゲルー at the present Nobori district, and at Toyotomi. Mamiya evidently took the Benkei name to be the same one.
- documents
Tōyama Kagemichi, fifty years before Matsuura, also writes へにける and treats 弁慶 as the later spelling, which puts two independent witnesses behind the reading.
- topography
Walking the shore, the author was stopped by a cleft in the rock partway along Ishimasadomari and took to the hill to regain the highway, which is the route the name describes.
penke and ru are dictionary words in the proposed senses, the compound is ordinary, and two Edo-period observers independently record ヘンケル / へにける. The identification of the road itself is the author's, argued from the maps and from walking the ground.
Penge-not
‘The upper cape’ proposedProponent: John Batchelor
Penge means upper in contradistinction of the lower part of a river or mountain or portion of the sea coast. Not means jaw, and is applied to blunt capes. The correlative term for lower is pange.
Batchelor's reading and gloss as printed in 1905; the segmentation is his, and several of its elements answer to no dictionary headword.
Attestations
- ヘニケウ map Edo period
松浦山川図, 伊能大図 (ヘニケウ岬) and 泰蝦夷島図 carry this form; 間宮河川図 has ベニケウ, 天保里数図 ヘニツケウ岬, 今井測量原図 ベニケフトマリ. Many maps write the Japanese 弁慶岬 instead. A purely Japanese name would not vary like this.
zenibako_trek… 表「旧図に見られる弁慶岬のアイヌ語形」 - ベニツケウ document Edo period 西蝦夷日誌
従是大岩壁なる故、九折を上り平野に出、爰をベニツケウ[弁慶岬]（大岬）と云。
Matsuura climbs from the shore to the plateau just past the rock hole of Fueomai and reaches the cape from above.
zenibako_trek… - へにける document Edo period 未曾有後記
「べんけい」には非あらず、「へにける」也と云。転訛して「べんけい」と呼しより、判官のことは一般の口実なれば、やがて弁慶の字を用るなるべし。
Tōyama Kagemichi passed here some fifty years before Matsuura and heard the name as へにける, taking 弁慶 for a later respelling attracted by the Yoshitsune stories.
zenibako_trek… - ヘンケル document Edo period 窮髪紀譚
弁慶岬は蝦夷言葉でヘンケル
zenibako_trek…
Related names
- フヱヲマイ ふえおまい — The rock hole west of the cape, where the shore route ends and the climb begins. zenibako_trek…
- ルーサン るーさん — ru-san 'the road comes down', marked on 伊能大図 on the far side of the cape from Fueomai. zenibako_trek…
- ヌカモリ ぬかもり — A knoll by the sumo ring associated with Benkei, drawn in Matsuura's sketch from the Shubuto ferry crossing; tuff is exposed there. The name looks Japanese, from 糠盛り, though the author allows that not-ka-mori 'knoll above the cape' is another way to take it. zenibako_trek…